


Just Another Thing People Do

by FlipSpring



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual themes, F/F, M/M, Murder, Other, Sexual Themes, alcohol consumption, and existential dread, aromance, bad language, blatant enbyness, can someone explain to me the difference between a T and M rating for fks sake??, cuss words, excessive imbibing, gender shit, it's gay what do you want, like im talkin casual shape-shifting gender shit, nasty Black Death Deaths, rated for:, side character OC death, side character oc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 22:36:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19450876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlipSpring/pseuds/FlipSpring
Summary: “I’ve got to admit, God did a pretty bang-up job with the firmaments,” said Crowley, “Look at this de-tail.”He raised a wilted flower on a broken stem, holding it right in Aziraphale’s face. Aziraphale went a little cross-eyed looking at it. The bruised white petals, the stamens dangling by a thread. And then, in a quick, fluid motion that didn’t give the angel so much as an opportunity to flinch, Crowley tucked the flower behind Aziraphale’s ear.Aziraphale reared back, alarmed. Crowley grinned at him, and the grin was too many teeth, too sharp.“It’s cute. Am I right in guessing that you’ve got a soft spot for the vice of vanity?”The angel removed the flower from behind his ear, and the demon pouted.*an angel and a demon play at being human





	Just Another Thing People Do

**Author's Note:**

> Az & Crow (but particularly Az), are characterized more closely to the versions of them from the Book, rather than the Show.
> 
> also this is canon-uncompliant in the sense that Zira & Crowley can and do shift their bodies, like, just casually. just caj.

It was a warm summer night in the Fertile Crescent. The people of the town Tún were throwing a celebration. They were celebrating the True-Naming of the local king’s youngest daughter, who was eight harvests old by now, and therefore likely to survive to adulthood.

The daughter in question wore a crown of reeds and flowers, and a dress of fine linen. She danced in the dancing-circle as her townspeople sang, and clapped, and showered her with tokens and grain. She danced while holding the hands of her father, who danced with her, who was more than a little drunk, who was grinning like a child himself, made young by the joy and pride of his youngest reaching the age of True-Naming.

Adjacent to the musicians, and within arm’s reach of the celebratory spread of foods, sat an angel, and a demon. The angel was working methodically through the king’s complementary finger-foods. The demon was working methodically through the king’s complementary wine. The demon was drunk. The angel was sober, and wished he were drunk.

“I’ve got a question for you, angel,” said the demon, who had recently changed his name to Crowley.

The angel aimed a suspicious look at the demon Crowley, and took another bite of toasted kettle-fruit. The angel’s name was Aziraphale, and he had only come to the True-Naming party to thwart the ill machinations that the demon was no doubt planning.

“I’ve got a bunch of questions, actually. What’s the deal with these Seven Deadly Sins? Can you actually explain them? I need to make sure I’m properly encouraging them.”

Aziraphale swallowed his mouthful of kettle-fruit. “I’m afraid I don’t follow,” he said, primly.

Crowley gestured widely at the party. More people were joining the dance. Most of them were drunk. A couple nearby was trading quick kisses, and giggles.

“Well, we’ve got. What’ve we got here? We’ve got some father’s pride, don’t we? That bloke over there’s absolutely chock full of sloth, he’s passed out in the cheeses. And, and look. I think those two are going to go off and get some nice lustfulness going. And all _those_ folks over there are absolutely burning up with envy. And even you’ve gone a little gluttonous, angel. That’s, what? Five of seven deadly sins, at a perfectly normal little gathering?”

The angel had been reaching for another kettle-fruit, but he stopped, and pulled his hand back to rest it a little guiltily in his lap. “What are you getting at?”

The demon shrugged. The thin linen wrap around his eyes had gone askew, and the corner of one gleaming golden eye was visible. He took another swig from his wine-skin, and let out a burp.

“The sins just seem rather… you know. Pervasive. So, if you’d be so kind as to explain to me _why_ the Big Bad Sins are all just… all just things people seem to do?”

“Obviously, they lead to corruption of the immortal soul,” said Aziraphale.

“Yes, yes, but what about indulging in them, just a little?” Crowley asked, “Are you not allowed to be proud of your daughter? Wrathful towards a betrayer?”

“Well. Not as such. They’re rather more like vices, really, rather than sins in their own right. If you want to talk true evil-doing, I think the Sins-That-Cry-To-Heaven-For-Vengeance are more salient.”

Crowley grimaced. “Ugh, not _those_. They’re so _serious_. Blood of Abel this! Crimes of Sodom that! The cries of the oppressed! The injustice to the wage-earner! _Murder_ and _rape_ and _bigotry_ and _exploitation!_ I tell you, angel. Sometimes I think the humans don’t need me at all. I’m superfluous. You know how depressing it is to be superfluous?”

Aziraphale gave Crowley a sidelong look. He then gave a sidelong look at the platter of toasted kettlefruit.

“Angel. Just have some more fruit already. I’m sorry I accused you of gluttony, all right?”

“Rightly accused.”

“Nobody’s looking.”

A moment of hesitation, and Aziraphale picked up another handful of kettle-fruit.

“There you go.” Crowley took another (smug) swig of wine.

The party eventually wound down. Aziraphale took it upon himself to clean up some of the mess as the humans slept. Crowley did no such thing, merely languished on a rug, legs stretched out in front of him, linen eye-cover pushed up on his forehead as he watched the angel travel this way and that, watched him tuck drunken and sleeping humans under blankets, watched him pick up fallen drinking-horns and magic them clean with a miraculous touch.

“You’re babying them, Aziraphale,” he said, when the angel had finished and come back to sit next to him, “How will they learn to take responsibility?”

“Oh, shut up.”

It was a clear summer night, the stars infinite and blazing.

“I’ve got to admit, God did a pretty bang-up job with the firmaments,” said Crowley, “Look at this _de-tail_.”

He raised a wilted flower on a broken stem, holding it right in Aziraphale’s face. Aziraphale went a little cross-eyed looking at it. The bruised white petals, the stamens dangling by a thread. And then, in a quick, fluid motion that didn’t give the angel so much as an opportunity to flinch, Crowley tucked the flower behind Aziraphale’s ear.

Aziraphale reared back, alarmed. Crowley grinned at him, and the grin was too many teeth, too sharp.

“It’s cute. Am I right in guessing that you’ve got a soft spot for the vice of vanity?”

The angel removed the flower from behind his ear, and the demon pouted.

*

It was an unseasonably chilly evening in the capital city of Punt. Aziraphale had a dinner appointment with a fellow angel Valisdriel, to discuss Important Angelic Business.

The dinner was to be had at a rickety little food stand, in a rickety little alleyway, crammed with lots of other rickety little shops. The air sizzled and sang with the scents and sounds of cooking food, and raucous music, and shopkeepers selling their wares.

Aziraphale arrived at the Rickety Little Food Stand precisely on time, and found that Valisdriel was already there, accompanied by a tall, dark, and handsome human. The tall human had long hair done up in complicated braids, and wore a rather put-upon expression.

Valisdriel waved. “Aziraphale! Please meet my good friend, Inté of Blackstone. Inté, please meet my good sibling, Aziraphale.”

Inté squinted at Aziraphale. “You look nothing alike.”

Valisdriel smiled a vacant sort of smile, and shrugged an idle sort of shrug. “Well, we're not siblings in the genetic fashion. Anyway, the mortal form means little when it comes to our familial ties. I mean, can you even imagine trying to coordinate our bodies with our thousands of other siblings, Zee? What a nightmare!”

“Val,” said Aziraphale, sharply. Meaning, _“Val, there is a human here. Keep a closer watch of that which you speak.”_

“What! You’re the one who told me I should try to like humans more. I’m trying to learn to like humans more, so I’ve made a human friend. See?” Valisdriel pointed at Inté, for emphasis.

“ **Val** ,” said Aziraphale, more sharply. Meaning, _“Truly, Val, we cannot just go around letting people know that we are ethereal beings not of this plane.”_

But Inté just snickered. “Val is funny, no? Here, let’s get some dinner.”

They had dinner, eating sweet-and-salted wraps, and deep-fried dumplings, and skewered kebabs next to a hulking statue in the Offcenter Square. Valisdriel chattered along, very casually gossiping about both ethereal and human happenings in the city. Inté mostly ate in silence, occasionally snickering, occasionally grunting in agreement. Aziraphale wasn’t sure how to deal with the presence of a human being at a meeting that was supposed to be about heavenly affairs. At least the human in question seemed to be taking Valisdriel’s chatter to be a sort of joke, or extended metaphysical metaphor.

“I ran into a demon, the other day,” said Valisdriel, “He said he knew you. Do you know a demon name Crowley?”

“The lore thickens,” said Inté good-naturedly.

Aziraphale sighed, and decided to give up and stop trying to speak in an oblique manner more appropriate for human ears. Valisdriel certainly wasn’t bothering. Inté seemed determined to ignore the fact that there were two angels talking about angelic things right under their nose, after all. “Yes, I know Crowley. What did he want?”

“He said to give you this,” said Valisdriel, and leaned forward, and pinched Aziraphale on the cheek, hard.

“Ow!”

Inté laughed.

Valisdriel frowned, apologetically, an expression that twisted up every part of the face. “Sorry, dearest Zee. But I did promise him I’d pass the message along.”

Aziraphale pressed a hand against the assaulted cheek. “Well, if you see him, might I request you give him a good kick in the shin from me?”

Valisdriel gasped. “Zee! How can you expect me to commit a _violent_ act? Even if it _is_ against a demon?”

Aziraphale stared, incredulous. “You _just_ pinched my face.”

“Well, yes, granted, but that pinch was from a demon, not from me.”

“I like you angels after all,” said Inté, decisively.

Aziraphale looked at the human, who was sitting cross-legged, and was using a kebab stick to pick at food in their teeth.

“You know,” Inté went on, “I wish I could be an ethereal angel. I hate being a mortal human being.”

Valisdriel gasped, again. “Inté, I’m so sorry! It’s not your fault you’re a human. You’re really quite nice, even if you are capable of immeasurable evil.”

The human rolled their eyes. “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean I don’t want to die. I want to be immortal.”

Valisdriel looked about to speak, but ultimately remained silent. Aziraphale was likewise silent. What were you supposed to say, when a mortal professed a desire for immortality? You couldn’t console them. Death was inevitable, for them. Death was part of their very foundation.

“The Gods truly cursed us, didn’t they, by making us aware of our own mortality?” said Inté, and smiled crookedly. “We humans, we’ve got immortal hearts. We’ve got souls that yearn for divinity. We’ve got minds to contemplate and create all sorts of infinities. We’ve got dreams, we’ve got nightmares, and we know that death is coming. We’ve got everything, except time.”

Aziraphale had nothing to say to this. Usually, interacting with humans was a superficial business. Aziraphale loved humans, of course. It was an angel’s duty to love all creation. But there wasn’t really much point to cultivating deep relationships or conversations with humans, short-lived as they were. Like fireflies in the summer, lovely and glimmering, but ultimately gone by the turn of the season. It had somehow never occurred to Aziraphale that the humans might feel the same way, only they had no choice but to be mortal, no choice but to forge their entire, blazing lives in the space of a handful of years. They were created in God’s image, after all. They _were_ divine. But so painfully limited.

“Oh…,” said Valisdriel softly, “That’s so sad.”

Inté shrugged. “Well. Even immortal beings like you will die at some point. It’s only a matter of scale.”

Said Valisdriel, in an almost light-hearted way, “Dearest Inté, I don’t think you quite understand the meaning of the word _immortal_.”

“Maybe not. But I know that death comes to all things. Even the Gods.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” said Aziraphale. But Inté only shrugged.

Two years later, Aziraphale met up with Valisdriel again, for dinner.

Valisdriel was uncharacteristically quiet, through the whole meal. Aziraphale kept carrying the conversation, trying to encourage a response, but Val only ate, slowly, silently.

“What’s wrong, Val? You’ve been terribly quiet.”

Valisdriel peeled back the rind of a fruit, slowly. “Inté died last week of an infection.”

“… I’m sorry,” said Aziraphale, because that seemed like the right thing to say.

Valisdriel shrugged. “I think I don’t really like humans after all. It’s awful, getting attached to them. Just awful.”

“I think you do actually like them, though,” said Aziraphale.

“Yeah,” said Valisdriel, smiling bitterly. “And it’s all your fault, dearest Zee”

*

“Fancy catching you here. Is that a new body?”

Aziraphale turned, and saw a demon, passing as a mortal woman, her face shadowed by a deep, heavy hood.

“Yes,” said Aziraphale.

“Nice,” said Crowley, “Me too. I’m trying out boobs. I think I went too big with these ones, frankly.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Can you not talk about your breasts during the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth?”

Crowley turned her hood towards the front of the crowd, where three Roman soldiers in their ceremonial soldier get-ups were erecting the cross. A fourth soldier was reading out Jesus’ crimes against the Empire. His voice droned, and was difficult to make out.

A person in the crowd complained loudly about how long the crucifixion was taking, and how he was supposed to visit his mother that afternoon, and how this was going to make him late.

Said Crowley, “Right. You’re right. How’re you liking your boobs, by the way? They’re smaller, obviously. I should’ve done mine smaller.”

_“Crowley.”_

“Fine, jeeze. Touchy.”

“Jeeze?”

“Yeah, jeeze, like Jesus. I’m hoping it’ll catch on.”

“It won’t catch on.”

Crowley huffed, and adjusted her boobs.

They got drinks, after, in a dingy bar halfway across town. Despite the heat of the day, Crowley ordered hot tea, and hot wine, and mixed the two together when they came to the table. Aziraphale, being more sensible, ordered room-temperature wine, with a slice of room-temperature citrus.

“I like your hair,” said Crowley, after downing half of her two hot drinks. “It’s curly as anything.”

“It’s always curly.”

“Yes but this time it’s _long_.” She swept her hood back, and Aziraphale saw that Crowley’s hair was short, and flat. “Mine came out weird.”

“Yours is fine too,” assured Aziraphale.

Crowley took another deep drought of hot-wine-tea. “ _Blerugh._ Here’s a topic for you: gender. What’s up with gender?”

“No idea. It’s a human thing.”

“Yes but is it a human thing because it’s a _human thing_ or is it a human thing because they _think_ it’s a human thing? Are we talking biology or sociology?”

Aziraphale shrugged.

“Mortal men keep staring at my boobs and I want to tell them, sir. I can and I _will_ take your head off in one bite.”

Aziraphale snorted, despite herself. “Hm, well, I’ve found they stare at my hair.”

“That’s because you have such good hair. Do you know how horny human men get for good hair? It’s ridiculous.”

The demon leveled a calculating, golden-eyed stare at the angel. She traced one fingertip around the rim of her mug. “Angel. Have you tried masturbating?”

Aziraphale had been taking a gulp of room-temperature wine, and promptly coughed it all up through her nose. “Crowley!”

“Oh, don’t be such a prude. And don’t lie to me, I’ll _know_ if you’re lying.”

Aziraphale felt heat on her cheeks, and hoped the tone of her skin was dark enough to hide it. “Why are you asking me this?”

Crowley shrugged, expansively, and gestured expansively. “I’m just asking. I’ve tried it, obviously, but I think I’m doing it wrong. Like, it’s _alright_ , I _guess_. But the way the humans generally seem to love sex so much I definitely think I’m missing some key element.”

Aziraphale snuffed the last of the wine out from her nose, and fought a very studious internal battle to not imagine Crowley spread-eagle, legs apart, head thrown back…

The angel covered her face with her hands and took a steadying breath.

“Ha!” said Crowley, “You _have_ tried it.”

“I admitted to no such thing,” said Aziraphale, muffled slightly through the hands pressed firmly against her burning face.

“Oh, this is delightful. You are such a blushing virgin, angel.”

Aziraphale abruptly composed herself, and picked up her drink. “Perhaps your problem is mental rather than mechanical.”

“Hm?” Crowley tilted her head to one side. An earring dangled and flashed, golden.

“Sex is as much a state of mind as it is a physical one,” said Aziraphale. “Perhaps even _more_ a mental than a physical one.”

“Hm, okay. There’s an idea.” Crowley bobbed her head thoughtfully. “Cool, cool, cool. Do you want to come back to my place? For sex. With me.”

Aziraphale suddenly and mysteriously felt very light-headed. “Uh.”

“Come _ooon_ , angel. Let’s do it. We’ve both tried all sorts of human things. Food, drinks, music, et cetera. Sex is just another thing humans do. Could be fun.”

“But this would certainly be a whole new level of my fraternization with the enemy.”

Crowley winked, and grinned her many-toothed grin. “Would you rather I tempt some poor innocent human into sleeping with a demon? At least you know what you’re dealing with. You’ve been dealing with me for a couple thousand years by now.”

Aziraphale sighed, and downed the rest of her drink in one go, and set her cup down heavily.

“Fine.”

Approximately one hour later, Aziraphale sat up from Crowley’s bed, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Crowley was trembling, sweat shining on her forehead and chest, and little snake-scales were glimmering in and out of sight across the skin of her body.

“Whew,” said the demon, after a while. _“Whew.”_ And she kicked Aziraphale lightly in the shoulder. Her eyes were closed, her mouth was grinning. “You dirty angel, you. You’ve thoroughly fraternized, now. Welcome to the dark side. At long last, I’ve tempted you into Falling! Victory is mine!”

“Do _not_ even joke about that,” snapped Aziraphale.

“I didn’t expect you to be so– _take-charging-ish_ , in bed.” Crowley stretched, languid, cracking her joints loudly throughout her body. “But it figures that you’d be a _generous_ lover. I just assumed you’d be all shy and silly about it. But it was mostly rather awkward, wasn’t it? I mean, it was fun, don’t get me wrong. But I still don’t particularly see what all the fuss is about.”

Aziraphale shook her head. Her hair was sticking to the sweat on her back. Somewhere, someone was singing in a high, thin voice that just barely carried through the open window.

Crowley raised one hand, and snapped her fingers. A stick of incense on the other side of the room lit itself, and a coil of translucent smoke unfurled from the tip, smelling like burnt, musky flowers. She then turned her snake-eyes on Aziraphale, and crooked a finger.

“Come here, angel. I’ll do you now. It’s only fair.”

*

The humans were calling it the Black Death. During the initial stages of the outbreak, Aziraphale miracle’d the health of her neighbors. But then more and more people began coming down with the illness, dying in hideous pain, abandoning their own friends and family and children to the clutches of the plague.

She packed up her books, and left town.

On the path through the mountains to a larger city, Aziraphale tried to think of how she might help turn the tide of the plague. She had a vague ideas of influencing a mayor to issue quarantine and treatment plans, of convincing people to bathe, of trying to dissuade towns from murdering their Jewish population. (Why did they always go for the Jews?)

The outbreak in her town had been thoroughly disillusioning. Aziraphale wasn’t really built to question the Ineffable, but it was hard not to, sometimes. Why a plague? Was Hell responsible, somehow, for the spread of such a devastating illness? An illness which raised a fear so powerful that humanity collectively lost its marbles and immediately degenerated into evil, desperate actions?

It was on this path through the mountains, Aziraphale bumped into another angel. A sibling, Valisdriel.

At first, Aziraphale thought the body lying keeled-over on the side of the dirt road was a dead human being. But as she walked past, the body stirred, raised a bleeding, shaking hand.

The body croaked, in a wretched, cracking voice, “Zee, is that you?”

Aziraphale stopped dead in her tracks. She hurried back to the body, kneeling down beside it.

“Val?”

Valisdriel looked up, and Aziraphale saw a scorched and blackened face, half-melted by fire, and a bloodshot eye oozing pus.

“My darling,” Aziraphale breathed, clutching Valisdriel’s trembling hand, “What’s happened to you?”

“I’ll be dying soon, I’m afraid,” said Valisdriel, “The demons got me with infernal flame.”

Dying. Dying. Valisdriel was dying, for real. Thousands of years, a sibling and friend, even if one that she only saw on occasion. A familiar face, an ally, a loved one, a fellow-in-arms stationed on the battlefield of Earth for thousands of years. Dying. In her mind’s eye, she saw a high-speed montage of Valisdriel over the years. Of the two of them having dinner in Punt. Of Val skipping through the shallows of the Red Sea and laughing in delight. Of late nights and early mornings spent conspiring to do good. Valisdriel was _like_ Aziraphale. More so than perhaps any of her other angelic siblings. Caught up in the reality of life on Earth, uninsulated, unlike those who stayed in the high towers of Heaven. And on Earth was where Valisdriel’s life would end.

“They did this to you?” Aziraphale gathered her sibling up in her arms, pressed the bleeding, scorched husk of a body up to her chest. “Did they cause the Black Death, too?”

“I don’t know,” said Valisdriel, clinging weakly to Aziraphale’s shirt with blackened, shuddering fingers, “I don’t know,” whispered Valisdriel, “But I’m glad you found me.”

Valisdriel was melting and evaporating in Aziraphale’s arms. Falling apart. Turning to grey ash, and red blood.

“Val,” Aziraphale whispered, “Val, can you hold on, for me? Please, can you stay?”

“I’m trying,” said Valisdriel, faintly, “But I’m so tired, dearest Zee.”

Aziraphale was left kneeling in the ditch on the side of the road. Her shirt was bloodstained. Her hands powdered with grey ash.

She magicked away the blood, but it felt as though it was still there, staining.

In the next town, devastation. The outbreak had started earlier, here, had hit more people. Aziraphale walked trancelike through the putrid streets, saw the bloated bodies, the rats nibbling upon them. She got to the center square, and sat down heavily on a bench there.

“Hey, angel.”

She looked up. It was Crowley.

“A real mess this is, isn’t it?” said the demon, “A real bummer.”

“Is this your doing?” Aziraphale asked. The words came out sharp, accusatory.

Crowley made a face. “ _Really?_ You think I’d come up with something so disgusting? This place used to be _fun_. Now it just stinks. You should know the people of this town thought they were being smote by God, for their sinning. Is this _your_ doing?”

“Of course not,” retorted Aziraphale, "How could you even suggest it?"

But then. Whose fault was this? Why, how, for what purpose, was all this meaningless suffering? She shook away the thought, viciously. She was not built to question. Crowley had questioned, and it had recast him as an agent of evil. She looked at him. He was watching her, through those glasses of his, his face somewhat sunken. He looked, overall, worse than when she'd last seen him, just two months ago, in this very same town, when all the people were celebrating, dancing, drinking to the arrival of spring and to the health of their loved ones.

Aziraphale stared at Crowley, and tried not to think the terrible thought. That it had been Crowley who had murdered Valisdriel.

“Have you come across any angels today?” she asked, most casually.

“Aside from you, you mean? Nope,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale let out a heavy breath.

“What’s wrong, angel? You seem rather glum. Is it all these dead bodies all over every which place?”

Aziraphale waved off a fly that was investigating her face. “I suppose you could say so.”

Crowley took the seat beside her on the bench. “I’d say, ‘Let’s get out of this dump and go get some lunch,’ but I don’t think there’s any decent lunches to be had for miles.”

“… Do your fellow demons ever die?” Aziraphale asked.

“Whew, oh yeah, they sure do. All the time. Mostly from killing each other. Serves us right though, wouldn’t you say? Since we’re _evil?”_

Aziraphale looked at Crowley, saw that he had his chin tucked in, arms crossed. She’d known him for long enough by now to be able to tell when he was agitated.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said.

“Relax, relax, I hate nearly all their guts, and they hate mine,” said Crowley. “No scales off my back, when a fellow asshole kicks the bucket.”

Aziraphale tilted her head, tried not to be so acutely aware of the stench of rotting flesh, of the flies buzzing around the blood like bees to honey, of the crows and rats and other scavengers tearing apart all the bodies around them that had once been living, breathing, fragile, divine human beings.

“... That’s pretty sad, you know.”

“Psh.” Crowley leaned back on the bench, stretching his arms and legs out, staring out at the ugly carnage of a town brought down by disease.

“I think I’d be sad if you died,” said Aziraphale. The words half-surprised her as they left her mouth, but she found they were true. “So. Try not to.”

Crowley opened his mouth, and froze there in a sort of wordless gape. He then closed it, and cleared his throat. “You absolute shithead,” he said, which Aziraphale took to be a compliment.

Aziraphale plucked at the front of her perfectly-clean shirt. “I think I want a new body. Somebody bled all over this one. It doesn’t feel good anymore.”

“You’re so squeamish. One little-bitty splash of blood and you want a whole new body? C’mon, this one suits you. You’ve had it for ages.”

“You’re just sentimental because this is the one I first fucked you in,” said Aziraphale.

“Language, angel!” grinned Crowley, clutching at his heart in mock-scandal.

Aziraphale closed her eyes and focused. She felt the swirl of her own holy grace, felt the shifting of her body into that of a new one. She had a vague idea in her mind of what it might be, but nothing too concrete. Bodies never came out exactly as envisioned, anyway.

Aziraphale opened his eyes, and then looked down at his hands. His fingers were a bit longer, skin a bit weathered, tendons less flexible, but serviceable enough.

He looked up. Crowley had raised his tinted spectacles and was giving Aziraphale’s new body the once-over.

“Well, alright. This one’s fine too. I suppose I’ll get used to it.”

*

After the end of the world, Aziraphale and Crowley went back to Crowley’s flat (rebuilt courtesy of the Antichrist), to get thoroughly hammered.

“It’s got to end at _some_ point, though, doesn’t it?” Aziraphale asked, halfway through the second bottle of Jack Daniels. Whiskey wasn’t really his preference, but his main objective at the moment was to get as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible, by whatever means necessary.

“No, I don’t see why it’s got to end,” said Crowley, and then drained the rest of the Jack Daniels at record speed. “Shit.”

Aziraphale pointed at the bottle, and it filled itself back up. (“Thanks, angel.”)

“Well it _began_ , didn’t it? Surely that means it’ll end.”

“Your logic… is weak,” said Crowley.

“Give me that,” snapped Aziraphale, and snatched the Jack Daniels from the demon. He soldiered through about a quarter of the bottle, and then stopped, and wheezed. This gave Crowley the opportunity to snatch it back.

“Oh… jeeze,” said Aziraphale, lolling back on Crowley’s spotless leather sofa. “I’m having an existential crisis. Maybe I should sober up.”

“Oh no-no-no-no. No. Don’t you _dare_ ,” said Crowley. “I’m not ready to sober up, and I’m _definitely_ not ready to be drunk all on my lonesome.”

Aziraphale emitted a sorrowful, gurgling sound, not entirely unlike a kitchen drain being unplugged. “But we _are_ going to die, whether in five minutes when God decides to wrap up this little experiment after all, or tomorrow when our respective Head Offices decide to execute us both, or in some thousands of years when you get accidentally splashed with holy water and I get scorched by infernal flame. It’s, it’s going to be _awful_ , and we’re going to be _dead_.”

“Well, do what the humans do, then,” said Crowley, “They deal with being mortal every single day of their brief little lives.”

“How’s that?”

“Don’t think about it too hard,” said Crowley, and stood up off the couch to gesture dramatically, clearly on the verge of some grand soliloquy, but he only managed to sway wildly. He sat back down on the couch, hard, almost slipping onto the floor. “Shit-fuck.” And then he really did slip off the leather couch, and banged his knee on the coffee table, and dropped the bottle of whiskey, which clattered off across the floor, miraculously without spilling any liquor. “Fuck-shit!”

Aziraphale stared down at the demon, who was clutching at his knee and whining like a teakettle, and signed, resignedly. “Dear, do you know that you are very, very precious to me?”

Crowley lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, clutching his knee. His mouth gaped open and closed, like a fish trying to breathe. Finally, he managed, in a very casual, very _cool_ sort of way, “Well, _obviously_. I'm hot shit, of course. Look. Stop worrying about impending death and let’s make the most of the fact that we didn’t die _today_ , hm?”

Crowley crawled carefully back onto the leather sofa, into Aziraphale’s lap, and leaned close, one arm braced awkwardly against the armrest, breath hot and tickling at the angel’s ear.

And he whispered, very, very quietly, “ _You're_ quite precious to me, angel. You, you, _you_ \- massive arrogant dumbass, and I _swear_ I’ll kill you for it."

Aziraphale laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, my precioussssss


End file.
